Former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump has reversed his stance on the possibility of banning the social media app TikTok, warning young Americans that President Joe Biden’s efforts to do so are a ploy.
During his first term in office, Trump pushed for the app to be banned in the United States due to security concerns as the company is essentially owned by the Chinese communist government. However, now that his opponent for the 2024 presidential bid is following a similar path, the former president has warned the public that this move is part of the president’s “major threat to democracy.”
The proposed ban was wedged between a controversial foreign aid package that was approved by the House of Representatives over the weekend. Set to be voted on in the Senate this week—where it is expected to pass—the so-called TikTok ban would require the app to find another parent company and divest from the Beijing-based tech company ByteDance.
On April 22, just days after the bill was approved by the House, Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to blast the possibility of cracking down on TikTok. He addressed the message “especially [to] the young people” and described the sitting president as “Crooked Joe Biden,” who would be responsible for the ban.
The Republican added that the plan would lead “Facebook [to] become richer and more dominant” and set Meta up for being able to “fight” the GOP, “perhaps illegally.” Trump then accused the scheme of being “election interference” and called on “young people” and all voters to “remember this on November 5th, Election Day.”
The presidential candidate finished his post by declaring that Biden “is destroying our country.”
Just so everyone knows, especially the young people, Crooked Joe Biden is responsible for banning TikTok. He is the one pushing it to close, and doing it to help his friends over at Facebook become richer and more dominant, and able to continue to fight, perhaps illegally, the…
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) April 22, 2024
As noted by RedState, the pending policy surrounding TikTok would force the app to sell to a different parent company but would not explicitly ban the technology from the United States. Even though it could remain in the American market, the Chinese government has declared it will not allow ByteDance to sell the app.
If TikTok does not divest from the Chinese company, the app will end up blocked in the United States. In addition to national security concerns, some legislators have called for a ban on the app due to its high risk among young people, too many of whom have wound up injured or dead because of notorious “TikTok challenges” that some argue are being enabled by the technology.
